\." \ " '\ \ 4L\ . the cave, I was crying and Precious Auntie was grunting to reassure me, because I could not see her inkstained fingers to know what she was saying. I had to follow her handclaps, crawling like a dog so I would not hit my head. When we finally reached the larger part of the cave, Precious Auntie lit the can- dle lamp and hung it on a pole left by one of her clan long ago. On the cave's floor, there were dig- ging tools-iron wedges of different sizes, hammers and claws-as well as sacks for dragging out the dirt. The walls of the cave were many layers, like an eight-treasure rice pudding cut in half, with lighter, crumbly things on top, then a thicker, muddy part like bean paste below, growing heavier to- ward the bottom After centuries of people's digging, there was an overhang waiting to crash down and bite you in \. /i" I: ./' ' , /'" -.,.. "./. . <e \ IV, I)h "; ,\ I . / / . " / " I I , \ \'\ / ....;.... . - , .:. / /; /1 'V' (L v7 . two, which was why the cave was called the Monkey's Jaw. While we rested, Precious Auntie talked with her inky hands. Stay away from that side of the monkey's teeth. Once they chomped down on an ancestor, and he was ground up and gobbled down with stones. My father found his skull over there. We put it back right away. Bad luck to separate a man's head from his body. Hours later, we climbed back out of the Monkey's Jaw with a sack of dirt and, if we had been lucky, one or two dragon bones. Precious Auntie held them up to the sky and bowed, thank- ing the gods. The bones from this cave, she believed, were the reason her family had become famous as bonesetters. Precious Auntie's father was so tal- ented that patients from the five sur- rounding mountain villages travelled to see him. Skilled and famous though 136 THE NEW YORKER, DECEMBER 25, 2000 & JANUARY I, 2001 he was, he could not prevent all trag- edies. When Precious Auntie was four, her mother and older brothers died of an intestine-draining disease. The bonesetter was so ashamed of being unable to save his own family members that he spent his entire fortune and went into a lifetime of debt to pay for their funerals. Because of grief, Precious Auntie said with her hands, he spoiled me, let me do whatever a son might do. I learned to read and write, to ask questions, to play riddle games, to write eight-legged essays, to walk alone and admire nature. The old biddies used to warn him that it was dangerous, and they asked why he didn't bind my fiet. My father was used to seeing pain of the worst kinds. But with me he was helpless. He couldn't bear to see me cry. So Precious Auntie freely followed her father around in his study and shop. A customer could point to any jar on the shelves and she could read the name of its contents. By the time she passed into maidenhood, she had heard every kind of scream and curse. She had touched so many bodies, living, dying, and dead, that few families would consider her as a bride for their sons. One night, as we ate dinner in the Liu compound, with Mother, my yo un- ger sister Gao Ling, and the rest of the family, Precious Auntie told me a story with her hands, which only I could un- derstand. A rich lady came to my father and told him to unbind her fiet and mold them into modern ones. She said she wanted to wear high-heeled shoes. "But don't make the new fiet too big, " she said, "not like a slave girl's or a fòreigner's. Make them naturally small like hers." And she pointed to my fiet. I'd forgotten that Mother and my other aunts were at the dinner table, and I said aloud, "Do bound feet look like white lilies, the way the romantic books say?" Mother, who had bound feet, frowned at me How could I talk so openly about a woman's most private parts? So Precious Auntie pretended to scold me with her hands for asking such a question, but what she really said was this: They're usually cramped like flower- twist bread But if they're dirty and knotty with calluses, they look like rotten ginger roots and smell like the snouts of pigs three days dead In this way, Precious Auntie taught